


Of Burning Suns and Red Hair

by SophisticatedCat



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anxiety, Bucky Barnes's Notebooks, Flashbacks, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-War Bucky Barnes, i'm bad at naming things k, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophisticatedCat/pseuds/SophisticatedCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky's body is in Bucharest,<br/>but his mind is on a summer day with Steve. </p><p>A brief little thing I wrote that has Bucky writing about the memory of buying hot-dogs with train money and the nameless redhead.<br/>I threw in some feelings-for-Steve related frustration because why not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Burning Suns and Red Hair

The memories come in flashes. Like flashing film that's missing some segments. Sometimes, those segments are just one frame, sometimes entire plot points are gone. 

Steve was there. He was still small here, a skinny kid with blonde hair flopping onto his forehead. 

Once Bucky has a visual on Steve, the timeline is easier. Steve is young here, but not a child. He's still short and asthmatic. Steve's size tells Bucky it's before the war. The softness of Steve's expression and smile in his voice tells Bucky it's before Sarah died. 

Gradually Bucky starts putting together the setting. It's the summer. He focuses on the sun, beating relentlessly onto them. It makes everything relentlessly hot. Sweat started to run down the back of Bucky's neck and pooled in the creases of his elbows. 

Bucky knows what it smells like. Even though he's in the room in Bucharest, he can smell the New York summer heat radiating off of the pavement and wood. He clenches his jaw and pushes back the longing he has to see Brooklyn again. It won't be the same anyway. 

In Bucharest, the pen in Bucky's hand flies over the page. Scrambling to write the memories and senses down before they can escape his mind. 

He remembers Steve and Bucky...himself...buying hotdogs. There was a slight pang of guilt in his chest, knowing the money had another purpose. It was supposed to be their train money home. The guilt of wasting his money was cancelled out by the sheer joy that filled him when he looked at Steve's smile. It's Steve's mischievous smile. Bucky's come to recognize it instantly: Steve's eyes are dark and less-squinted than his laugh-smile. 

The Bucky in 1930-something New York smiled down at Steve. The Bucky in 2015 Bucharest, Romania smiled into the open notebook.

Remembering the various expressions on Steve's face and how he caused them comes as a personal victory to Bucky every time. 

They almost make Bucky wish he could draw like Steve. He wants to capture those expressions and keep them forever, safe. 

Bucky looks up from the notebook and wiggles the pen in his hand. There was a girl. She had bright almost-unnaturally red hair that was carefully rolled and pulled back. She smelled like summer-sweat and clean linen. The freckles that covered her cheek bones and nose were chestnut brown from the sun. Bucky remembers putting on his most Charming Smirk when she noticed him. 

This is where it gets frustrating. 

Bucky has the idea of her in his head. He feels a familiar twinge of caring for her. She's not complete though. She's there, Bucky feels for her, but she has no name. 

He gets other memories of the girl. They come in flashes. He was holding her hand while he walked her home. He remembers the warm-sweet taste of her lips and the way she always stopped to pet the street cats. 

The harder Bucky tries to focus on her in that moment, the more she seems to slip. Bucky keeps tries to stay focused on the scene with the hotdogs. He goes over the parts he knows in his head, over and over, trying to trigger the next part of the story. 

Every now and then, Bucky catches the perspective changing. It's like he's looking at the scene through an outside person. He sees Bucky, Steve, and the girl. 

Bucky is also frustrated with what he feels for her. There's genuine care there, but is it love? He loves Steve, he knows that. Did he always love Steve? In what ways does he love Steve? Can he love two people at once? Is he even capable of real love, or is he just remembering how it felt? 

Was Steve ever jealous? Bucky suddenly remembers kissing a different nameless-faceless girl and looking over her shoulder to make eye contact with Steve. 

Was that real? 

There's flashing again. Film reels playing out-of-focus footage of the redhead. It was not overly intimate. Bucky and the redhead walk side by side, then he's handing her an oversized stuffed bear, and she's hugging him before walking into her building. 

His mind is reeling now, trying to make sense of the hundreds of loose ends and unanswered questions it's trying to process. Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and tries to refocus on that hot afternoon with the hotdogs and the train money.

After a few minutes Bucky lets out a frustrated groan and shuts the notebook. He carries it to the shelf across the room, and places it down gently on top of a couple of others. 

Bucky would love to keep trying, but he knows how frustrated he can get. He knows how sometimes, fishing for memories accidentally brings up the unwanted ones. He can already hear the blood pounding in his ears. His breaths are shallow and too fast. 

God who he wants to keep trying. _What was that girl's goddamn name?_

He's too exhausted to risk digging any deeper. 

He flops down on the bed, _too soft_ , he thinks. 

Bucky closes his eyes, pushing the mild buzz of fear to the back of his mind. He pictures Steve smiling at him, and gently falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. 
> 
> There's really not much plot, but I liked the idea so. 
> 
> I LOVE writing about Bucky and his memories. 
> 
> As always, I'm open to prompts and suggestions <3
> 
> (edit: I realized, during my second watch of CW, that it's train money. Although it's a petty detail, it was driving crazy, so I edited some content to align better with the information in CW.)


End file.
